


Loving Blamelessly

by FromMyLibrary



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gangsters, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromMyLibrary/pseuds/FromMyLibrary
Summary: I get Johnny boss man vibes so I...Johnny is a mafia boss and he gets shot and eventually confesses to Taeyong. That's it. That's the story.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Loving Blamelessly

The snow came thicker, the gossamer of winter sheathing itself on the tree branches, on the roads, and in the air like a solidified mist of white. His world was seeping into the blank image before him, tumbling out of ceaselessly grasping hands which caught naught but empty space. It was a wish to be grounded by the comforting warmth of the hand against his cheek, to allow a gentle happiness to wedge its way in, and to seal him up against the world in strong arms just aching to hold him there. For the first time in a long time, Taeyong let himrself be comforted by a place, and a hand, and a body who he might call home. Time passed slowly. Each minute ticked for three and each hour stretched itself languidly by as if reclined on the sofa next to him, refusing to get up, a lazy clock hand weakly pushing against gravity. 

“I can’t believe it’s already winter,” Johnny mused, snuggling the other into his shoulder.

Taeyong hummed wordlessly in response. 

“It’s been quite a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you realize exactly how long it’s been?”

Taeyong lifted his head and gazed at the other. “I came to you in late spring. On a train from nowhere. I don’t think I could ever forget even if given a hundred years.” Taeyong stilled for a moment. “You meant it? What you said then.”

Johnny hummed in response, laying the boy's head back down on his shoulder, against the warm chest as it rose and fell, cradling the smaller into his beating heart.

“Boss man!”

Taeyong and Johnny shifted, drawing their eyes up to the looming figure of Jaehyun, voice having penetrated the small refuge they created.

“It’s time," he told them. "We have an appointment.”

“Ah, yes. Is it that time already?” Johnny said standing. “Is Doyoung ready?”

“He decided to pick up Jungwoo and meet us there.”

Johnny frowned. “Jungwoo was supposed to be with Mark today if I’m not correct. With the brothers at the east end.”

“Mark handled it sooner than we thought.”

“Good then. Call Doyoung. Tell him we’re on our way.”

Jaehyun nodded silently and left.

“Where are you going?”

Johnny looked back at Taeyong, nestled into the blankets of the couch and smiled fondly.

“You don’t usually ask.”

“This time I’m curious,” he admitted.

“It’s nowhere I haven’t been before,” Johnny whispered caressing the other's hair lightly. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised before walking to find Jaehyun.

He waited. Taeyong waited until the sun drifted down and the snow stopped, as Mark and Haechan filtered in, weary and wet from the melting blizzard, as Jungwoo and Taeil came running by in a flurry of shouts and giggles followed by a exasperated Sicheng. They talked and made dinner. They sorted their work and watched t.v.

“He said soon,” Taeyong muttered when Taeil told him to go to bed, tugging the younger's hand up from the sofa where he lay. 

“Taeyong, it’s okay," Taeil coaxed. "He’ll be fine.”

“But he promised,” he pouted.

“Want me to call Jaehyun?” Taeil whispered back, making sure not to wake Haechan and Jungwoo who slept beside them, Mark passed out on the floor at their feet.

“Yes please.”

Taeil pulled his phone out, and dialed the boy. Holding the ringing phone out to Taeyong. It clicked open after two rings to shallow breathes and a frantic shuffling.

“Taeil, shit. It’s bad, man. Tell Haechan to sterilize the equipment. We’re on our way n-” he was interrupted by a grunt and a painful moan.

A slightly muffled _‘We’re almost there. Hold on’_ emitted through the speaker before the Jaehyun’s voice returned. “Tell Haechan. It’ll be 15 minutes tops.”

“Jaehyun?”

“Taeyong? Shit! Taeyong, everything is fine. Just tell Haechan. No wait, tell Yuta. He’ll know what to do.”

“What happened?”

Another grunt resounded on the other end of the line. _‘Johnny, shut up’_ Doyoung’s voice gritted out and Taeyong's heart froze.

“Taeyong! Tell Yuta!” Jaehyun shouted sternly and hung up. 

He started to cry as the phone fell from his hand, Taeil’s expression immediately softening as he knelt in front of the younger. 

“Taeyong, what’s wrong?”

“Where’s Yuta?”

“Why?" the other questioned. "What’s going on?”

“I need to find Yuta. I need to tell him. Where’s Yuta?” Taeyong started rambling frantically pushing him away and running to the stairs.

Taeil caught up with him and grabbed the younger's shoulders firmly. “Taeyong, tell me what happened.”

“Johnny…” he choked out, thick tears falling down his cheeks. “The equipment…”

“What?”

“Haechan has to sterilize the equipment,” he repeated.

“Oh. Oh, no." Taeil realized in a second. "It’s okay,” he threw out, looking around the space. “Stay here, okay? I’ll find them. I’ll handle it.” And he ran off.

A whirlwind of grim faces and serious demands filled the space, a professionalism he had not seen take root in the others since he met them. It was easy to forget the life they lived sometimes. Easy to forget the consequences. Taeyong followed like a lost child as they prepared the medical room. Mark came downstairs with a bottle of whisky and placed it next to Haechan, rubbing the other's shoulder in comfort with a stoic empathy etched on his face. The youngest sat waiting, knee bounding up and down like a motor and biting his nails into oblivion.

“Is that a good idea?” Taeyong found himself asking. 

“It’s for Johnny,” Haechan answered. 

Moments later, Yuta burst the door, a fumbling sequences of thuds behind him followed by Jaehyun and Doyoung all but carrying Johnny between them. Red staining all their bodies: legs, arms, faces, and torsos.

“Get him up,” Yuta instructed.

They maneuvered Johnny's lumbering, nearly limp mass onto the table before Haechan, jostling his body a bit. Johnny screamed around the cloth which had been placed between his teeth when his shoulder hit the surface roughly.

“Where is it?” Haechan asked, cutting his shirt open and searching for the blood.

“His shoulder.”

“His stomach.”

Jaehyun and Doyoung looked at each other.

“There were two,” Doyoung corrected.

Haechan groaned and began to clean the blood away.

“Everyone out," he ordered in a jarringly calm and calculated tone. "Tell Sicheng to come, but everyone else out now.”

“But-” Mark began to argue before Haechan silenced him with a glare and returned to cleaning the bullet holes.

Jaehyun grabbed Taeyong and led his numb body out of the room. 

“What happened?” he growled, now sitting on the floor of the basement outside the room.

Jaehyun, slumped next to him in exhaustion, sighed heavily and continued to wipe his arms free of blood. The hallway sat silent and dark, everyone having retired upstairs after the first half  
hour.

“Tell me right now.”

Jaehyun's hand dropped in defeat. “I don’t know…”

“What do you mean you don’t know. He was shot!”

“I was only there for one of them and let me tell you it was something stupid.”

Taeyong glared at him.

“Look, he got angry,” he exhaled tiredly in admittance. “And when he gets angry, he gets a little reckless. It’s nothing new, Taeyong.”

“Does he not care?”

“He does," the other breathed out, beginning to clean his arms again. "But he also thinks he’s invincible,” Jaehyun added in a little knowing smile. 

“But he promised,” Taeyong muttered defeated, looking at the floor. “He has someone to come home to now.”

Jaehyun stopped. “He doesn’t know how good he’s got it, does he? You could put that man in paradise, and he’d walk himself right out again.”

“I noticed.” 

Jaehyun gave him a sad look and stood up, picking up the washcloth from the floor. “Alright," he huffed. "As much I want to stay here with you, I have to go find Doyoung. We gotta fix some stuff. Will you be alright?”

“Yeah," Taeyong answered in a quiet voice, eyeing the empty hall. "I’ll be fine.”

“He’ll be fine too,” Jaehyun smiled. "It's gonna be okay." 

In the silence Taeyong found himself calmed. He had not been left alone for in a long time he realized. Surrounded always by people, or preoccupied by life, to forget that he was in fact living. His mind had been pushed back in the frenzy of things and finally came forward again, like an old friend, amidst the chaos and the doubts, it stumbled forward waiting to be found again. 

The door opened sometime later, a yawning Sicheng and an exhausted Haechan leaving the room together, arm in arm. Sicheng gave Taeyong a nod before leading the almost slumbering boy up the stairs quietly. Taeyong gazed into the space and saw Johnny sitting there, hunched on the table and covered in blood and stiches. He lazily massaged his arm, gaze drawn to the floor. The room was a mess of syringes, and red, and metal, dirty cloths strewn about. Taeyong stepped inside slowly and came to stand before him. Johnny's eyes met his shoes and then drifted up to his face.

“Hi,” Johnny whispered. 

“Hi.” 

"You waited?”

“Well," Taeyong breathed. "You promised.”

Johnny looked back at the floor again.

“What happened?” Taeyong asked gently, the anger falling from his body as he looked at the haggard curve of Johnny's spine and the ugly stiches he now bore, placed between old scars the boy didn’t know where there.

“I was too slow,” he said eventually.

“No.”

Johnny's eyes shot up confused.

“You weren’t slow," Taeyong said. "You were stupid. You were reckless.”

“I’m not any different than normal.”

“But you have a reason to be.”

“What’s that?” he smirked.

“No. I’m serious," Taeyong said. "Stop throwing your life away." 

His face contorted with so much emotion Johnny could barely place it. 

“You have a reason to start caring.” 

“I do care,” Johnny argued. "I care about you.”

“Stop it. You’re trying to find comfort in things that’ll kill you!”

“Can’t you see I’m not,” he gritted out.

“You’re running,” Taeyong said strongly. 

“There’s nothing to run away from," Johnny whispered, head dipping into his chest as if in shame. 

Taeyong's hand rose to cradle the other's sweaty, discolored cheek, brushing a gentle thumb under the man's eye. 

“There never was something to go back to…” Johnny trailed off for a moment. “It’s where I belong.”

“No one belongs alone,” Taeyong quipped.

Johnny sighed so deep in his chest it rocked his body. “I do,” he answered softly.

“Sometimes,” Taeyong started reaching out to touch his uninjured arm. “We are alone because we do not know any better.”

“It’s easier to run away than to face the things you love when they’ve gone rotten.”

“Then don’t let them,” Taeyong insisted, wrapping a hand around the other's bicep, holding the body before him as if it might just escape, might just dissipate and melt and leave him if he didn't ground it there. 

“It’s not that easy,” Johnny replied.

“Nothing’s that easy!” he yelled back. “It’s never easy. Life isn’t easy. That’s the point. You try and you try and _struggle_ and fail and try again. If it’s worth something it’ll never come easy.” He quieted down when Jonny didn't respond and reached for him. “Are you afraid of failing?”

“How could I possibly fail if I don’t try at all?”

“I don’t know, Johnny," Taeyong softly said. "I don’t have all the answers, but at least I’m looking. At least I care.” 

“I do care,” Johnny said again, meeting Taeyong's eyes, vulnerable and unguarded. 

Taeyong shook his head. “You keep saying that as if you’re trying to convince yourself. What’s the point of a life only ever half lived? Where does that get you?”

“I was never one for thinking about the future,” Johnny smiled playfully.

From where he drew this bravado and arrogance as he sat stitched and bandaged up on a small table in the basement Taeyong didn’t know.

“You’re infuriating,” he said. 

“And tired,” the other added. 

Grumbling, Taeyong helped him up the stairs, weight thrown across the smaller boy's shoulder. Johnny leaned on him  
more than Taeyong thought necessary but he didn’t say anything. They stopped on the first floor, seeing Doyoung and Yuta sitting in the kitchen.

“Johnny, we really should-” Doyoung stared when they appeared in his line of sight. 

“No," Taeyong cut him off. "No work tonight. He’s done.”

“Taeyong, we need to-”

“Nope. I’m taking him. Goodnight,” the boy finished steering Johnny away from the two men and upstairs.

“Are you in charge now?” he teased when they were out of earshot.

Taeyong shot him an unimpressed glare. “You’re on thin ice right now,” he grit out. 

“Me? What did I do? I’m the victim.”

Taeyong levelled the other with a look of vexation he hoped reached his eyes and merely tugged him  
along wordlessly to his bedroom, shoving him through the door to the bathroom.

“We need to clean you up,” he mumbled, kneeling beside the tub and beginning to fill it  
soundlessly, leaving Johnny leaning against the sink.

He turned around and looked at Johnny, bare chest covered in blood and dirt, pants dirtied as well. The boy winked at him with a nod to the filling bath.

“Just leave that on," Taeyong decided, turning away. "I really only need to get to your top half anyways.”

“You know..." Johnny started. "When you look at me you do it without fear or pity. It’s been so long since I’ve had that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You look at me as if I’m still good…” He paused, looking into the distance, past the tiles on the wall and the door, slightly ajar letting the bedroom light filter in. 

It was so still where they sat, so intimately quiet that it demanded words.

“Johnny, you don’t have to be good," Taeyong answered, finding the other's eyes once again. "Everyone pretends as if all the bad can be cut out. It simply isn’t right to abandon human nature, like an ignorant little god.”

“You speak as if you’ve already forsaken those people,” Johnny mused.

“Maybe I have.”

“Thank you,” he said after a moment. “For staying." 

“You never have to thank me for being by your side," Taeyong told him, turning away. "It’s where I’m meant to be,” he mumbled like it didn't mean anything, but it did - to both of them. 

“Taeyong,” Johnny started, and he hadn’t remembered the last time Johnny called him anything the darling little nicknames he had come to grow fond of. “You look at me like I hold the world in my hands and that scares me.”

Taeyong hummed in response, testing the temperature of the water. Johnny walked over when he didn’t respond and sat on the lip of the bath.

“You know what scares me?" Taeyong asked, knelt on the floor beside the bath. "Infection.”

“Ha!" Johnny laughed out in a mocking tone. "Clever!”

Taeyong made a motion to swat his injured arm.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Johnny mumbled, moving into the tub and slowly submerging his body in the steaming water.

Taeyong stood to grab a washcloth, coming back to find Johnny grinning at him with an impossibly bright, impossibly perfect smile for his present state, matted hair stuck to his forehead, dried blood caking around the deep lip of his clavicle. Taeyong sat back down beside the tub again and wet the rag before moving to touch the other's chest without making eye contact.

“When you came to me you did it in a way which made me forget not ever having you there,” Johnny's voice drawled, dripping the words off his tongue until they feel into the water and melted. “It was as if I was given what was always meant to be mine.”

Taeyong quietly continued cleaning him.

“I know you miss them…" Johnny continued. "But could you hold the pain of mourning a future you never met?” he coaxed with such viciously seductive words leaning forward. “I fear the dream I have every night where I lost a future with you in it. Can you imagine?”

So he did. Taeyong imagined the happiness, and the peace, and the love, for a person he would never be, for a mirage and a character. He imagined waking up to a world which did not beat for him but the imposter he wore like a second skin who slipped into the lamb pasture to dawdle. He imagined the binds of expectation which would slowly, surely choke the fight out of his breathe given time. Taeyong looked up for the first time to the other's face, bare and naked before him and closer than he wanted it to be. Johnny's eyes were waiting there for him. 

“Your future,” Johnny smiled. “You’ve made a painfully brutal truth of it. And I’m sorry that I dragged you into it angel, but even your vices are virtuous.”

“I’m not an angel,” Taeyong said, more of a thought to himself than anything else. “I don’t think I ever was.”

“I’d never want you to be anything you’re not,” Johnny drew out languidly as if the words weren’t chosen but simply tumbled from his tongue in such a raw subconscious belief, as if he exhaled them into being.

That was it. Those words, they were all Taeyong had ever wanted to hear without knowing how much he needed them. It was nice not to be expected for once.

“I’ll never ask anything of you but for you to choose for yourself,” Johnny told him. 

Taeyong wondered if it was a confession, a promise, or a threat. What was the difference anyways? He dropped his hands for a moment from where they had ceased cleaning and had merely  
rested against Johnny's skin. 

“Don’t give up,” Johnny said. “Not until your knuckles start to bleed and your muscles start to ache. Don’t give up until every last breathe drawn from your chest is done in triumphant relief and  
you can hold your head higher than it’s ever been before. My dear, you could be a god.”

The water sloshed as Johnny brought his hand up, tiny droplets falling back to the tub with soft plops. Johnny stared at him so intently that Taeyong thought perhaps the other saw right through his soul. 

Taeyong made a non-committal murmur in response, angling his body to leave but Johnny's hand shot out and gripped his wrist.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes upon,” he breathed. “it’s a shame all I can give you is the world.”

Taeyong knelt there, half crouched to leave and the other half letting Johnny hold him back, letting Johnny keep him. 

“What more is there to give?” he asked. 

“The heavens,” Johnny said kissing the upturned palm of Taeyong's hand. “Hell.” He kissed inside the bend of his wrist. “And everything in between,” he finished lips dragging over Taeyong's knuckles. 

Taeyong didn't know how to respond, just rooted there grounded by the electricity in the other's eyes. Johnny released his hand and sat up from the position he had been reclining in, folding his long, tanned arms over his knees. His eyes closed in peace, a resting body innocent and blameless. Taeyong picked up a washcloth from the floor, wet it in the now lukewarm water, and started to scrub at the blood stains on Johnny's back, tender and feather light against the cuts and bruises. The other's muscles tensed at first, eventually relaxing under his touch.

“I’m so deeply enamored with everything about you… so much that all I want to do is think about you. I don’t sleep anymore, “ Johnny said. ”Because when I do, I only dream of you.”

Taeyong held his breathe.

“My nightmare,” Johnny whispered, his voice drifting in a sad prayer. “You do not belong in my dreams.”

“What am I like?” he asked. “In your dreams?”

“You’re so aggressively you that I forget I’m dreaming," Johnny answered. "But then you look at me… and your eyes are filled with something no one’s ever looked at me with before… and I remember.”

Taeyong stopped wiping the other's back for a moment, and dropped the cloth to sit in his lap. The breathe in his chest came a little more heavily and the strength of his heart withered and quaked in his ribs. 

“A little like they are right now,” Johnny added staring at him, “but I know it’s just my weary mind playing tricks on me, the wishful fool that I am.”

He paused, gazing down at the water as it rippled around him in faint currents, now tinged with the airy swirls of blood that dripped down in clouds of deep red.

“If all you would bring to me is torture wrought in your wake I would gladly take it. If all you ever did was hate me, I would spend every waking moment…” his voice trailed off, a plea stuck in his  
throat.

Johnny didn’t have to tell him. Taeyong knew, and he fell instantly, deeply, and irrevocably with Johnny Suh, submitting to every beautiful thorn the man had. Johnny's strong arm darted out  
and grabbed his waist over the edge of the rub in the next second, an abrupt tug catching him off guard and tugging him inside in a flurried splash.

“Johnny!” he screeched, immediately soaked.

The other simply chuckled in response. “I was getting lonely, angel.”

“What are you doing?” Taeyong inquired as the other moved to hug him back to his chest, winding his arms around the small frame now sat in his lap.

“Nothing.”

“Johnny…”

Hours later, Taeyong laid in the warmth of arms tightly held and soft cascading breaths. Turning over to face the body which nestled him, he smiled at the face which had, more than anything else, refused to leave his mind.

“You are the most innocent of my indulgences,” the voice he had come to memorize spoke.

In moments like this it was soft and gentle. In others, it was gravely and tired, slipping out of exhaustion. When Taeyong first heard it, there had been a lilt of confidence which scared him, and then again, through the ears of Johnny's enemies, he trembled at its words. But now he knew every cadence and every dip and every huff. He knew what Johnny meant by the way he said it and sometimes before the other even said it at all. 

“It’s all we ever want," Johnny said. "Power.” He traced his hand down Taeyong's bare side. “The power to rule yourself more than anything else. There’s nothing free about living, darling. You must fight for it.”

“That sounds like an awfully tiring life,” Taeyong responded. 

“Indeed it is, darling…. You should rest.”

“So I can fight for tomorrow?”

“So you can win,” Johnny said kissing his head.

Taeyong stayed silent watching him as he laid there, so vulnerable and open. “It’s like you’re afraid,” he whispered, reaching out to Johnny and petting his face as the other's relaxed into his touch. “Afraid I may break in your world.”

“I may drown you in the sins of my past until there's nothing good left to save you.” Johnny looked at him with a faint smile. "But I am slowly coming to realize that may be an impossible case. You-“ he breathed staring past Taeyong eyes and into the boy himself, “may very well be even stronger than me.”

“Perhaps it is you who needs my protection,” Taeyong murmured back and he meant it in more ways than one.

Johnny moved closed, encasing the smaller figure before him entirely into his chest. 

“If I relinquish my demons,” Johnny whispered against the other's lips. “I have no doubt they might bow to you,”


End file.
